Cleaning fairy aka drill sergeant

Yesterday, we played Mommy's favorite cleaning game.

It's my favorite because it's the only one that works with my competitive, stubborn boy. We set the timer for a certain amount of time (usually six minutes since L. is six), and we have a contest to see how many things we can put away in those few minutes. This is how I get him to clean his room.

I was pretty sick of the mess around here, and so I made the whole family play my favorite game, cleaning the whole house. I upped the ante by giving the winner a quarter. By the time six minutes were over, the house was almost clean. L. decided he wanted to keep cleaning if I'd pay him an extra quarter. What can I say? It's worth it. Then he wanted to vacuum. Who am I to say no?

Anyway, the point is, the house looked so much prettier when we were done. It's amazing what having a clean house can do for my state of mind. I don't get nearly so frazzled and annoyed. I can think more clearly because even though I know there's still dust everywhere and the pile on top of the file cabinet is almost as high as the file cabinet itself, at least it feels less cluttered. It's well-managed chaos.

And when my mind is less cluttered, I feel like I can write a little easier. The house and its nagging messes aren't lurking at the back of my mind, distracting me. Write a chapter? Oh, yeah, no problem for this Domestic Diva. I can do anything.

Of course I'd rather write than clean. But sometimes I can't write much until I clean first.

Somebody still has to wash the dishes

I told Mark all about my feelings of meaninglessness (see previous post). He mentioned listening to NPR's report about the Canadian military's efforts to rebuild an orphanage. I thought he was just talking about NPR because that's what he likes to do. Then he said, "You know, even after they rebuild the orphanage, someone is still going to have to wash the dishes."
I didn't get it at first.
What I think he meant was this: Months from now, when we don't hear about rebuilding efforts in Haiti in the news anymore, there will be lots of kids living there. And they will need to eat. And someone will have to clean up after them.
There won't be any news reports about them. So is their job any less important?
Of course not. Without someone to feed them, the kids would starve, and what use would the rebuilt orphanage be to them then? They still need nutritious food on clean plates. They still need clean clothes.
We don't hear about them. We probably never will.
We don't hear about the millions of people who wash dishes, clean laundry, and wipe up poop in day care centers, nursing homes, and hospitals, every day, for minimum wage. We don't pay them much, and we don't give them any attention. Just the opposite, in fact. We look down on them, because, after all, how much skill could it take to run a dishwasher or a laundry machine? Dead-end jobs, we think to ourselves. Boring, repetitive, mindless, dead-end jobs.
Those so-called dead-end jobs keep people alive. Nobody sees them doing those ugly jobs, though. I mean, the laundry facilities aren't on display in the hospital lobbies or behind the orphanage's front desk.
And nobody sees me doing what I do. It seems simple enough. Millions of mothers, cooks, janitors, etc. do it every day, so it can't be that hard, right? I'm only keeping people alive, after all. I'm never going to be on the news. Can't you just see it? Mother cooks dinner for her family. See it here at ten.
So it's repetitive, boring, and thankless. So my kids aren't orphans in Haiti.
But I'm keeping them alive. 'Cause someone's gotta do the dishes.
Thanks, honey.

Happiness and sleep are synonyms

For the last couple of weeks, Baby has gone to bed before 9:00. Let me tell you, there is major rejoicing around here. The extra couple of hours in the evening has allowed me to reclaim some physical space and some brain space. When she didn't sleep until 10:30, things were not so happy. How do you keep small objects out of baby's mouth when you don't have time to pick them up off the floor? How do you set the table when you don't have time to do the dishes? How do you send off magazine queries when you can't type your own name?

Easy. You just convince your baby that everyone would be much better off if she went to sleep at the same time as the other children. She complies, and life gets much happier.

Mark and I clean up the clutter and do the dishes. Then there's still time to write a page or two in my novel, email a couple of queries, and still more time to waste on Facebook. Not that I've mastered the art of getting up before the kiddos like I thought I would when the late night baby parties ended. But I'm starting to feel like a person again. So now I just have to convince the dishes that everyone would be much happier if they would wash themselves.

Shoot for mediocrity

I hate it when people tell mamas to stop obsessing about everything. You don't have to be a perfect mama, they say. Just do your best. My friend Diana used to have a quotation that read: "Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss you'll land among the stars." Not sure who said it. I asked the internet, and it doesn't know either.
I'm not shooting for the moon anymore. Not when it comes to motherhood. I don't fret about the shelf I didn't dust. I'm not really concerned about the junk in the drawer or the unorganized pantry. Nope.
I am aiming for mediocrity, and sometimes I don't even get that far. Who has time to worry about straightening their hair when some days it's a challenge to get a shower? Who has time to match their kids' clothes when they don't even remember to wash breakfast off their kids' faces? It's not that I think I have to be perfect. But decent would be good. Most days, I don't even get that far. It's kind of discouraging.
All I want is for my kids to eat, have clean clothes, and not impale themselves or choke on random household objects. But even that's too much some days, and the kids go to school with dirty clothes and very little nutrition while I scoop action figure heads from baby's mouth. So if you don't get to mediocrity, where do you end up? Just breathing, baby. At least we can still manage that.

SAHM Bill of Rights

1. I am their mother, not their slave. Serving my children also means teaching them how to serve.
2. I have the right to burn, tear up, incinerate, shred, or stomp on my to-do list.
3. I have the right to ignore or even leave my children occasionally to teach them that Mommy has a life.
4. I can talk to myself all I like. Since I get so few compliments, I am entitled to congratulate myself out loud if I want to.
5. I am aware that my children will watch what I do. I will affect how my boys will treat their wives and how my girls will mother their own children. Therefore, I have the right to be a whole and happy person.
6. With the possible exceptions of stinky diapers and bleeding children, I have the right not to do a particular household job right now if I don't want to.
7. I have the right to choose my own priorities. And if my priority is to take a nap, blog, or call a friend, the laundry can wait.
8. I have the right to have interests other than house, home, and family.
9. I have the right to a messy house. It is not a reflection on my character, which means I also have the right not to apologize for said messy house.
10. Childhood does not wait, but dishes do. I can play Monopoly with my children and the dishes will still be there when I'm done.

How to Shorten Your To-Do List

Larsen, Jo Ann. I'm a Day Late and a Dollar Short...and It's Okay! Shadow Mountain, 1991.

I bought this book a couple of years ago. I found it in a bargain bin, but it would have been worth it even if I'd paid full price (or double).

Here are just a few excellent sentences: "As you set priorities, delineate the amount of housework you'll do each day. As you know, there's never an end to housework--and for many women it's always there, intimidating, pushing, prodding, and indicting them. Because of this, you need to take charge of your time." (193)

"I can't anticipate or control the way other people make messes or move the pieces of my house. Nor is there always enough of me to go around. Nor can I always fix things or people the way I'd like. Nor should a clean house be entirely my responsibility--it should be our responsibility. Therefore I give myself the right not to have an ordere house in a disordered world. And the right to have other priorities besides my house." (188-9)

I think my favorite sentence is the last one. There are some people who could cook, clean, and do laundry all day and enjoy it (or so I hear). I'm not one of them. I don't want to spend my entire life taking care of my house. There is too much life to enjoy! So if you feel less than perfect because your house looks like people actually live there, take heart and read this book.

Let's get these definitions straight

Housekeeping: the stuff you have to do to keep people alive and healthy
Homemaking: the kid-raising, relationship-building stuff you do so that someday your family will love each other

Here's why we have to get it right--we get them mixed up all the time. If we think they're talking about housekeeping when we hear that homemaking is the best job in the world, that homemaking's rewards make it worthwhile, that homemaking is the most important role we'll ever take on, etc., we'll be disappointed. And we'll make ourselves crazy.

I once read an article by Anna Quindlen where she complained that she couldn't stay at home all day because she knew that doing nothing but worrying about defrosting freezers would make her crazy. This doesn't mean I don't understand the isolation and unfulfillment stay-at-home moms sometimes feel. And I'm a writer, too, so I get the importance of having outside interests. What I didn't like was the implication that staying at home means nothing but housekeeping. It feels like that sometimes when I'm drowning in laundry, but homemaking goes deeper.

I hate messes, I truly do, but I need to step back from the piles of dust sometimes in order to say to myself, "What am I trying to accomplish here? Have a perfect house or raise some children?" I didn't quit my job in order to iron clothes. I could do that anywhere (and get paid for it, too). I quit my job because I knew I didn't want to be apart from them while they were little (although sanity breaks still come in handy).

This homemaking stuff--being a mama, I mean--goes on for quite awhile. Sometimes it seems like the housework goes on forever, too. Housekeeping is part of the job description because outsourcing it would be difficult. I'm home more, so I do more. Plus, to be honest, I care more. I don't have a built-in dust filter like a man does. But it's only part of what I do. I also kiss knees, pull pasta out of kids' noses, take kids to the park, and break up the kids' fights.

The housekeeping is not what makes my family what it is.

I am not the best housekeeper in the world. I kill plants, I rarely dust, and I hate cooking. I like crafty stuff, but I just don't have time to make crafts a priority. The bathrooms are, honestly, gross. But I'm still a great homemaker because I do a good job taking care of my children. I want to be there for the baby smiles and the funny dinner comments. I'm lucky because I get to do that, and because I even get to do a little work on the side.

And one day, my kids will stop fighting with each other.

Housorexia

Some women obsess over their weight. They weigh themselves daily, count calories, and starve themselves because they hold themselves up to the magazine models and think their lives are meaningless if they don't look exactly like the airbrushed, photoshopped, rake-skinny ladies they see everyday. I don't mean to make fun of people who have this problem. It is a serious affliction. But I am lucky in that respect.

Fortunately, I have never had a huge body image problem. I also have never had an eating disorder. I don't hate my reflection or waste time despairing about how many calories I've eaten that day. I have a different disease you may not have heard of. It's called housorexia.

This is what I do: I look at the staged clean countertops, the perfectly coordinated couch cushions, and the unstained carpets in the glossy ads and think "Why doesn't my house look like that?" The children in the ads never have poopy diapers or holes in their clothes. The mommies are always smiling. And their freakin' kitchens are always immaculate! And instead of thinking something intelligent like "Those pictures were taken on a photo set where no children live," I think, "My house could look like that if I cleaned it up every night at midnight."

And how is that any better? We teach teenage girls that they don't measure up if their waists are more than twenty inches wide, and we teach grown women that they don't measure up if there are more than two crumbs on the floor. And the silly thing is that we fall for it.

Instead of thinking that I'm great for what I've done that day (kissed the kids, got them dressed and fed), I think I'm deficient for what I haven't done that day (didn't have dinner ready, didn't clean the toilets, didn't dust the picture frames). That's what makes it so pathological, just like the anorexics who are never skinny enough. The house will never be clean enough, no matter how clean it is. The distorted lens we see it through keeps telling us we can stop cleaning after we dust just one more shelf or scour just one more bathtub. But we never get to rest even then, do we?

The next thing on my to-do list is to change my thinking about my house. I'm sure I will post more about it in the future. My body is not starving, but my house is starving for some serious sanity. Next time I think something like "I'll never get all this housework done", I'll make sure to mentally add, "So what?"

That's a good question, by the way. So what? My house won't make the cover of this month's Better Homes and Gardens? My son's friends will go home and tell their mommies that Liam's mom has a messy house? Or (gasp) someone might come over and see the squalor? I'm not going to be a slave to anyone else's (imagined) judgment of my housekeeping skills.

I've got other things to do. Like feed and dress my kids.

Super pooper

Have you got an ABBA song running through your head yet? It's all part of my evil plan. Actually, it's part of Kyle's evil plan because he's the one who puts the song in my head all day long.

Potty training is taking a long time at our house. Kyle gets the peeing in the potty thing, most of the time. Pooping, though, not so much. He has a poopy accident almost every day. I can even tell when it's going to happen because sometime around 5:00, it gets very, very quiet. Then I find a little present waiting for me on the carpet, the kitchen floor, or outside. Just in case you were wondering, I prefer the kitchen floor. It's easiest to clean.

Oh, yeah. We are good at cleaning poop here. They didn't have any classes in Poop Cleaning at Mommy University, but they didn't have to. They knew we'd get more than enough real-world experience, so no books needed.

There are several different categories of poop accidents, ranked by cleaning method:

1. Wipe boy, soak clothes
2. Stain remover for boy, clothes, and carpet
3. Bath for boy, clothes, and sheets. Chisel for carpet.
4. Garbage for clothes and sheets. Hose for boy and carpet.
5. Seriously considering garbage for boy.

Unlike my blogging buddy Heather, I did not take a picture of the latest poopy accident. I wanted to block it out of my memory. Here's how it went down:

I was lying in bed, when at about midnight, Mark announced that something was very stinky and requested help. Here are the places we found poop: Kyle's bum, thighs, calves, feet, waist, elbows, arms, hair, ears, sheets, clothes, and crib. I took the boy out and threw him in the bathtub. Since the showerhead had little or no effect, I thought about a new cleaning method, the chisel for boy option, which until now has not been on the list. Eventually, I got him scrubbed and scraped and shampooed off. Mark attacked the crib with bleach. We decided to throw the clothes and sheets and blankets outside, to be hosed down sometime after daylight.

So today, I didn't get any of the laundry or dishes done. I was too busy attacking a Thomas the Tank Engine blanket with a garden hose, baby screaming all the while. The silver lining in all this crap (ha!) is that Kyle didn't have a single accident today. Maybe he got everything out last night.

Boy oh boy

I still haven't adjusted to the idea that I really have a girl. After having two boys, I honestly started to believe I wasn't capable of making any girls, like Henry VIII in reverse. Only I didn't decapitate my husband. It still seems very strange since I know a great deal now about how to raise boys. Girls are foreign territory. If you have boys, here are some tips from my boy-raising experience:

1. Liquid soap and shower gel are the way to go. Don't buy bar soap. Not now, not ever.

2. Get used to reading in the dark. If you have any floor or table lamps, it's best to get rid of them now before your boys break them in a million pieces.

3. Speed dial is a good thing. Use it for plumbers, your window replacement guy, and unsuspecting babysitters you will pay twice what your neighbors with girls will pay because the poor teenagers really don't know what they're getting themselves into.

4. Look in, on, and around the toilet before sitting down. Any questions?

5. Practice the phrases, "What? I can't hear you!" and "I'd better go RIGHT NOW!". They are all you will say to your family and friends on the phone for the next twenty years.

6. Notice that hole in your pocket? There's a corresponding one in your wallet. They seem to get wider every time you enter a toy store.

7. Just go ahead and cut a hole in your boys' pants when you bring them home from the store. Or better yet, buy them with pre-cut holes in the knees. Then patch them up. Right now. It will save time later.

Why I need help

Ha! I bet all 2 of my loyal readers had something to say about me after reading that title! Just kidding. I actually have 3 loyal readers.

Anyway, I was thinking about something I read a long time ago (I am so the less-effective writer who can't even give you a source) where some husband said something like this: "My wife doesn't come to my office, go to my meetings, do my paperwork, or help me out in my job in any way at all. That would just be silly. So why should anyone expect me to help with hers?"

Here goes. Sir.

If you're assuming that your wife's job as a SAHM is to do the dishes and the laundry, WRONG! Her job is to take care of the children. She probably didn't give up her career (or potential career) because sparkling windows were her life's ambition. It was because she couldn't resist those cute little dimpled faces. She may do more housework than you because she's home more or because you've agreed to that together, but that's extra. So you don't need to feel you're doing her job when you sweep the floor. Also, even if you understand that her job is child care, they are still your children, too.

How many hours a week does your job take? 40? 60? Her job is more like 100. Are you paying her overtime? Are the kids? Didn't think so. She puts in a lot more hours at her job than you. Not that we're keeping score (OK, we are), but sometimes she needs a break.

Also, she may not be proofreading your interdepartmental memos at the moment, but she probably has helped you with your job at some point. Like when she put you through school so you could get that job, or helped you study, or helped you prepare for the interview.

It's probably a good thing I don't know the source for that quotation. I don't think his inbox is big enough. But I'd be glad to share the responsibility of opening some emails with him.

The symbol of my life

In my first semester of English class an unnamed number of years ago, we had an assignment to write about "the symbol of my life". My life has changed, and so this piece of paper is my new symbol.

In case you can't tell, this is a photo of a schedule. My very own to-do list. Yes, I'm neurotic that way. I used to make to-do lists during my summer vacations. Anyway, notice where it is. That's right, the floor. It used to be posted to the fridge until my baby tore it down. Is that symbolic or what?

Now, this list has many things on it. There are weekly jobs to do divvied up on different days in addition to the daily tasks. I made my list because I cling to this vain hope that if somehow I were more organized, my house could be organized, too. The theory was that if I had a certain time to do things, I would do them at a specified time instead of running around trying to get fifteen things half-done simultaneously. The only difference it made is that now I know which tasks I'm never going to get done.

The problem with a schedule is that if I get behind on one thing, everything else gets thrown out of whack. Let's assume, for example, that the kids have been crying and whining all day long (we're really going out on a limb here) so that I have either an earache, a headache, or both, by the time day is done. At that moment, a nice cup of hot chocolate and the dishes both call out to me. Well, the dishes do, anyway--in that loud, annoying, deal-with-me-now sort of voice in my head. By then, I've had it with loud voices (you really know you're going nuts when even the voices in your head annoy you). The hot chocolate whispers in a sweet, soothing I'll-take-care-of-you sort of voice. I swipe a dish cloth over a plate a couple of times to pretend I'm going to do housework, and then me, my book, and my cuppa settle down on the couch.

It takes me at least a couple of hours to pull my shoulders down from their perpetually tense position (glued to my earlobes). Once that's done, I might go to bed or even have a conversation with my husband. (How are you? See you in the morning.) So even though my body actually shuts down at about 10, I don't get to bed until around midnight. I would really like to get up before the baby, but his wakey-wakey time inches closer to 6 a.m. every day, and even mamas need to get their sleep.

So then baby wakes up before daybreak, and Mama along with him. And what does he want to do? Sit quietly and watch Mama scrape last night's congealing macaroni from the plates? No, he wants mama juice (i.e. wants to nurse). Then he wants big boy food, and then he wants to explore the pantry, and then pull everything out of the kitchen drawers.

"Oh, yes," I think. "I was going to mop the floor and wash the car today." I can keep really good track of what I intend to do. But then I remember that that's today's list. I haven't done anything from yesterday's list, or from the day before that. Do we let the gathering dust fall off the ceiling fan until we can swim in it? Or do we neglect the charred black mess on the bottom of the oven until we start a kitchen fire? Decisions.

Then baby pulls the list from the fridge, which suggests that it might be more sensible to toss the list, since children don't believe in schedules. I suppose I could just let the list go. I could throw it away. But the garbage is overflowing almost as much as the recycling I didn't get to the curb on time this week. What day was I going to take out the garbage again? Better check my list.

10 Impossible Chores

Sometimes I wish I did a better job keeping up with the housework. I used to think I could easily keep a spotless house if I stayed at home. Ha! As irritated as I get when things are in disarray, I've realized that having a clean house is an impossible standard. And here's why--there is no time to do housework. I used to think that staying home would give me plenty of time, but it's just the opposite. The reason for this is that there are many, many chores that cannot be done while the children are awake. I will list them in case anyone doubts me.

1. Ironing. I might occasionally feel bad about the wrinkled shirts that have been hanging on the hall pegs for weeks on end. But I would feel a whole lot worse about my children ending up in the emergency room blistered to the bone because playing with the iron cord seemed so much more interesting than playing with Thomas trains.

2. Dishes. When Liam was a toddler, I actually put a baby gate up in the kitchen to keep him away while I was doing dishes. That wouldn't work so well now (with a bigger house and two children), so rather than letting Kyle impale himself, we sometimes eat with china plates and plastic forks.

3. Wrapping presents. Sharp objects (scissors), sticky objects (tape), and noisy, crinkly objects (paper). Enough said.

4. Sweeping the floor. While having a one-year-old necessitates more frequent floor cleanings, it also makes said cleanings rather difficult. My little one loves to impersonate a vacuum cleaner, and his favorite time to do so is when the food he so loves to scrounge is covered in dirt and dead insects.

5. Cleaning up toys. It's amazing how interesting broken and boring toys can become when Mama is trying to put them away.

6. Cooking dinner. Nothing says lovin' like knives, hot ovens, and hot stoves. And Mama loudly reminding them that I'm doing all of this cooking for them (so they can complain half an hour later about how they don't like whatever it is I'm making that they haven't tasted).

7. Cleaning bathrooms. I try to clean with natural products like baking soda so we only call Poison Control once a week. But I have another problem with the bathroom. Kyle's favorite place is the bathtub. He dives into the tub headfirst whether there's water in it or not.

8. Raking leaves. Who am I to deny my children the pleasure of jumping in a freshly raked pile of leaves?

9. Taking a shower. My children have a built-in alarm system set to wake up one minute before Mommy does. It doesn't matter how early I set my own alarm. They will find a way to disrupt my shower-taking time.

10. Making beds. It's not 100% impossible, but it took me several years to master the art of making beds while children are jumping on them. You have to time it just right so you pull the sheets during the split second their feet are in the air.

So, after recording all the chores that are impossible during the daytime, I think it's pretty amazing that my children are fed and clothed every day. Don't ask me to do anything more.

Sicko

A few weeks ago, I was sick. I wasn't so miserable I had to stay in bed--just miserable enough not to do housework (and how is that different from every other day?).

So for the entire day, I didn't do dishes or laundry. I didn't make any beds and I didn't clean any rooms. The children and I watched movies.

Miraculously enough, the world went on. The house did not cave in from the accumulated dirt. The children did not turn into serial killers (just cereal tossers). They didn't say anything like, "Mom, I can't believe you can raise us in a house like this. I am ashamed to know you." In fact, they seemed to enjoy themselves.

But I didn't. It was a novelty to sit around and do nothing, but the novelty wore off quickly. I get grumpy when I'm surrounded by squalor. I don't know if this comes from a pathological need for control or if I just like things to look pretty, but somehow all seems right with the world when our clothes don't smell (and we have more friends).

Lesson learned: The kids don't care about the state the house is in. They'd be happy eating from plates with last week's dinner stuck to them. So when I'm running around the house finding more messes to stress out over (let's not even talk about how often I haven't cleaned the bathroom since we moved in), I have to remember this--I'm a neat Nazi just for me.

My favorite things

I decided today my blog will be a little more positive. So here are a few mama chores I actually enjoy.

1. Blogging. OK, it's not in the typical hausfrau job description, but it keeps my household running smoothly (as in keeps mama sane), so it counts. It's cheaper than therapy and/or drugs, and it keeps me smiling. I compose blogs in my head when I can't be at the computer, so it helps me to find the funny. Oh, I am so sick I feel like the middle of a steamroller sandwich--ha ha ha! My child threw his toys down the vent again--ha ha ha!

2. Vacuuming. We recently bought a new vacuum to replace the one that died. Our new vacuum is a shiny red color, and it's bagless. The front is clear so you can watch the cracker crumbs and dust bunnies go swoop! inside the dirt cup. New gadgets are so fun. My husband would rather have a new game system or computer monitor, but I'm happy with my shiny red vacuum. Considering that my job that rarely has tangible rewards, watching my dirt cup fill up gives me actual proof of what I accomplished.


3. Laundry. I love how you put clothes and detergent in, and then you go somewhere else, and poof! the clothes just get clean all by themselves. Just like magic. Next I'm going to invent a baby-changing machine. Poof! Baby could change his own diapers.

I was going to write more, but baby is crying. Silly boy! Thinks I should come get him or something. That reminds me, I love how mamas can make just about any baby problem all better.

Mama's Day Off

I took the evening off, actually. Just a couple of hours. I told Mark that I was going crazy. I knew I was because my first activity when he took over was creating imaginary fights with him. I couldn't imagine that someone else besides me could even be capable of supervising my children without disaster. My first hallucination was that Kyle escaped when Mark wasn't watching closely enough, climbed the stairs, fell down all of them, and got brain damage. I realized soon enough that I had only created this scenario in my overworked brain, so I decided to be more rational for the next fifteen minutes.

Then it was time to imagine more catastrophes. It grew dark and I realized I hadn't had dinner yet, and neither had the children. Oh, poor starving babies, poor starving me. Mark, in my imagination, wasn't doing anything about dinner at all. I ran through the house to check out the dinner situation. But there was no husband and no children anywhere. So I scrounged a piece of bread from the fridge and went downstairs to watch TV. Whoa! How's that for a colossal time-waster? Just think of all the useful things I could have been rushing around doing! I saw a pile of laundry sitting on the dryer and I had to slap my hands to keep them from putting those clothes away.

Mark and Liam came home. Kyle was already asleep in his crib, so quiet I didn't even know he was there. Mark had brought take-out for the two of us and he also warmed up chicken nuggets for Liam. We ate, while, predictably, I felt guilty about taking time off and spending money on take-out (Validation intervention: You go, mama! You're doing a great job!).

So maybe I'll take the rest of the evening to watch more dumb TV shows which keep me from making up things to fight about with my husband. He can handle watching the kids--they're asleep. The laundry and dishes will still be there tomorrow (Oh, no! That's what I'm afraid of. Deep breaths. Great job.). Tomorrow, though, I'll do some more Mama stuff. This time off stuff just wears me out.

Publishers Cleaning House

I am a crazy, frenzied, cleaning mama. And now I've finally figured out why. It's because I'm trying to win the Publishers Cleaning House Sweepstakes. If I could just get my house clean enough, then they will show up on my doorstep with balloons and a large amount of money.

There can be no other logical reason for it. I used to think I would clean "in case someone else came over". Then I discovered the truth--people rarely come over, and if they do, they will come when my house is a wreck. I could have had my house white-glove clean for a week, but they will come on the day the dishes block the view out my kitchen window and the laundry is so deep a dogsled team couldn't get through.

Then I thought maybe I clean for sanitary reasons--to keep my kids from inhaling fungus that's bigger than they are. But I realized that was a lie when it didn't even bother me that my baby was licking three day old spaghetti sauce stains off the floor.

Then I thought it was to make me happy. Happy house=happy mama. That was another lie I told to the monster who stomped her feet on the floor and flailed her fists in the air like the four year old child who had spilled milk all over the fridge. I never knew until recently that the expression about not crying over spilt milk was for the parents, not the children.

So now I know the truth. It's all competitive. And I'm going to win. When I go over to another mama's house and it's a wreck, I secretly gloat when she apologizes. When I can actually see my face in another mama's bathroom mirror, it's not usually smiling. It's scheming. Because we're in competition, don't you know. I have to figure out how to beat her at her game. I have to rush home and clean some more.

Besides, if I don't hurry, I might miss the balloons.

Knee-kisser

Time to get out again. This morning, I kissed my own knee.

Why would I do that? No, it's not to check for the hairs I missed when I was shaving (though I always miss a few since I shave in the shower at least once a year and I can't see a thing without my glasses on), and no, it's not because I am in love with myself (though I'm pretty cute and I always listen when I talk to myself).

It's because there is always a child there.

Children do not understand the concept of personal space. When Liam (big brother) sees Kyle (little brother) lying on Mama's lap to nurse, why wouldn't he want to be there, too? The more the merrier! "Mom, let's play babies," he says. "You be the mama and I will be the baby." Mm, now there's a wild, reckless fantasy I want to indulge in.

I ask Liam, quite often, to give his mama some space. He knows I love to listen to myself talk (I always do, you know). So that means when Mama's lips are moving, the best thing to do is ignore her. He always seems so surprised when he goes in for the baby attack and ends up on the floor.

It's gotten so that I stick them in their car seats just for the pleasure of having them buckled in a locked car.

I bounce myself to sleep when my arms are empty, make snacks for children who are in school, and, like today, kiss my own childless knee. My brain thinks there is a child there, even when there's not. I haven't yet changed any phantom poopy diapers, but I'm sure it won't be long. I'll let you know. After I fill out my admission papers to the loony bin.